A Hole in One

Eric can be replaced by a ripped illegal alien Jesus and will be if he doesn’t start whacking his own weeds at home.   Yesterday morning he got up early and informed me he was leaving to play golf “with friends”.

     I quickly donned my golfing outfit (I don’t play, I just drink and drive the cart toward people who do. It speeds up the game and adds an element of danger).

He informed me that I could not go.

     “What?” I asked, certain I had not heard correctly.

     “You can’t go this time. We’re playing at a country club. It’s Members Only.”

     “Why can you go, then?”

     “I am an invited guest of my friend Phil,” he answered.

     I do not know this ‘Phil’. I don’t know where he lives, where he works, what his relationship is with my husband.  Phil, for all I know, could be a crack addict or work for Hewlett Packard. He could be Methodist.  He probably owns a big screen television and uses one’s name in every sentence.

     “You can’t go.” I told Eric. “You are supposed to file down Trixie’s corns today! You are supposed to tweeze the lawn!”

He kissed me, ON THE CHEEK, and left.  He was not wearing the golfing clothes I bought for him, the yellow and red tartan kilt and a hair shirt so that he’d remember to wash his balls at every hole, like we do at home. Instead he had on (men’s) chino shorts and a dark blue shirt with some sort of reptile on the pocket.

     He looked like someone who would start a sentence with “Say,…”

     I cried all afternoon.

     Well, I didn’t actually cry, I screamed and smashed things and it wasn’t really all afternoon, because I have a short attention span.  I was halfway through making my point in the kitchen and I had slowed and was eating between smashings, when I noticed something reflect light across the driveway. It was two men unloading a riding lawn mower from a truck filled with similar equipment.  The truck said Chavez Landscaping and Maintenance.  The glinting light was not from the metal of the mower or the shiny chrome on the pickup. It was one of the men’s perfect white teeth.  He didn’t have a shirt on.  His body was perfect in a way that made me think of Hot Jesus.  Only soften the ‘J’. In every window of every house as far as the eye could see, up and down the block, stood a gaping woman.

     I dropped the stack of Eric’s sister’s china, which thankfully shattered, and went outside immediately.

     “I don’t care what that hysterical squirrel is paying you, I’ll double it if you do my yard first. Immediately. Everything. Front and back and points between. Do you have tweezers?”

     Sadly, the men did not speak English very well and my Spanish is mostly limited to what I’ve seen Donkeys do to women.

     After gestures and sweating on both our parts, the men agreed to come back today.

     When Eric returned from playing Methodist HP Golf and parroting names back and forth until he was drunk with the ghost of Dale Carnegie, he went outside to mow the lawn. 

     “I have a groundskeeper now, Eric. Your work in our yard is no longer needed.” 

     He shrugged and went back inside to his television. From the back his head, a bald spot the size of a quarter, weakly reflected light from the window.